My guess is you have a bad connection somewhere .. from what I read (having never used one myself) about using the ZIF to CF adapters in the AA1, it may not show in the BIOS (if the CF is set to "removable media" mode), but it should show in the boot device selection screen.

I've tried to create a flip over cable using the various comments on the original site (but probably failed...). I think I've managed to order some flipover cables. I see also the comments about converting a card to fixed disc mode. Need to find out more about that too. Also I thought the black thingy was just a holder not a ferrite core anti interference device...

I'm using a Transcend card, I'll try to track down a Linux utility

I'll report progress back here in a few days time if/once I've got all the bits sorted out.

Most CompactFlash cards by default identify themselves as removable media instead of fixed disk. Which is fine for Linux, but not for Windows.

If you have to use a CF card that has the type bits set to Removable and want to install Windows XP you can work around it as follows;

Use Linux to partition the drive with a FAT32 partition (you can boot from one of the LiveCD/LiveUSB distributions for this), and set the partition bootable. Start the install of Windows, during install you will be given the opportunity to migrate to NTFS After the install is finished you will need to install the Hitachi microdrive disk drivers (google for XPfildrvr1224.zip), which will mask the removable bits and should allow suspend and other operations that fail on a removable drive to work.